ArchitecturalCollectiveEnunciation:

Thereignof‘Starchitecture’isover.Goodriddance.Ithasbeenburiedtogetherwiththeso-calledneoliberalerathathasdominatedeconomic,politicalandsocialsystemsuntil(thefinancialcrisisof)2008.Uncannily,thisturnroughlycoincidedwiththecataclysmofouroldfacultybuilding.Weupholdthehypothesisthatthecontemporarytrendsinarchitecturehaveemergedasanalternativetothe(st)architecturalpositionsdominant
since the turn of the century.

AsDonnaHarawaysuggests,diffractioncanserveasausefulcounterpointtoreflection:bothareopticalphenomena,butwhereasthemetaphorofreflectionreflectsthethemesofmirroringandsameness,diffraction is marked by
patternsofdifference.

An axis is a name for a continuum of
possibilities between two extreme positions: so the axis between black and
white is a scale of greys.

I can illustrate this
idea by applying it to the description of haircuts. [Diagram 1]

Rather than only being able to say of someone’s
haircut that it is, for example, masculine or feminine, we’re as likely to want
to say that it’s quite masculine, or quite feminine, or unisexual – somewhere
in the middle. When we do this, we acknowledge that the sexual possibilities of
haircuts don’t just fall squarely at one or another of the polar positions –
masculine or feminine – but somewhere on the wide range of hybrids between
them. In fact we would feel constrained if we couldn’t make descriptions in
these fuzzy, hybrid, terms.

If you were trying to describe a particular
haircut, however, you’d probably want to say more than ‘It’s quite feminine’,
or some other comment about its gender-connotations. You might also want to
locate its position along other axes – for instance along the axis neat <–> shaggy – ‘It’s slightly shaggy’ or ‘It’s very neat.’ If that then
gave you enough descriptive language to say everything you could imagine ever
wanting to say about haircuts, you could locate every example you ever met
somewhere on a two-dimensional space – like this sheet of paper. So you could
make a kind of graph – masculine <–>
feminine on one axis, neat <–> shaggy on the other. On this graph, which is a simple cross in 2D
space, any point represents a particular position in relation to the four polar
possibilities:

masculine <–> feminineneat <–> shaggy

I call each of these points a cultural address.
I could equally well call it a stylistic address. It is the identification of a
particular point in stylistic space, a ‘possible haircut’.

Those four terms still constitute an
impoverished language in which to describe most haircuts, and to describe a
wide range of possible haircuts we would need several others: natural <–> contrived, rebel <–>
conformist, wild <–> civilised,
futuristic <–> nostalgic, businesslike <–> bohemian.
Each of these polar pairs defines another axis along which any particular
haircut could be located. And each of these exists as a ‘dimension’ in the haircut space, which now becomes multidimensional and no longer easily drawable
on a sheet of paper.

We shouldn’t forget that
each of these poles has no absolute and for-all-time meaning but is also in its
own slow motion, stretching the axis of which it defines an end-point this way
and that. A really natural haircut, for example, is no haircut. But when we use
the term ‘natural cut’ we don’t think of someone with shaggy locks hanging over
their eyes, but of someone who went to the hairdresser and said something like,
‘Can you make it look sort of natural – a bit windswept?’, as opposed to
someone else who said, ‘Can you do me a nine-inch beehive?’

And
there is another complication: the resonances are quite local culturally. A man
with very short hair in East London in 1985 would be assumed potentially dangerous
and ‘hard’. The same man in San Francisco would be thought gay.

And if we look more closely
we see that many of the things that we would consider single qualities of hair
are actually themselves multi-axial spaces. To describe hair colour, for example,
needs much more detail than dark<–>light. It needs an axis of
redness, an axis of greyness, an axis of colour homogeneity, an axis of shine.

What strikes you as
interesting when you begin thinking about stylistic decisions (or moral or
political decisions) as being locatable in a multi-axial space of this kind is
the recognition that some axes don’t yet exist. For example, with hairstyles,
as far as I know, there is not a dirty<–>clean axis. That’s to say,
your hairdresser isn’t likely to ask you, ‘How dirty would you like it?’ It’s
still assumed that there is no discussion about it: the axis has not been
opened up. We would all want it ‘as clean as possible’.

Peter Schmidt used to talk
about ‘the things that nobody ever thought of not doing’. A version of this
happened in clothing fashion. There was recently a style – variously described as non-fit,
un-fit and anti-fit (the name didn’t stabilize) - which was to do with people
wearing clothes that exist at the never-before-desirable end of the newly
discovered axis well-fitted<–>badly fitted. These
clothes were deliberately chosen to look completely wrong. This was way beyond
baggy, which was a first timid step along that axis. Baggy implies the message
‘These are my clothes, but I like to wear them loose.’ Non-fit says, ‘These are
someone eIse’s clothes’ or ‘I am insane’ or ‘I cannot locate myself’ or ‘I
don’t fit.’

With punk, a brand-new axis
opened up: professionally cut<–>
hacked about
by a brainless cretin. As often happens, this
appeared (and was intended) to be an anti-style style, and was shocking because
we had never previously considered the possibility that the concept ‘style’ and
the concept ‘hacked about by a brainless cretin’ could overlap one another. But,
as usual, the effect was not to overthrow and eliminate the idea of style but
to give it new places in which to extend itself. ‘Hacked about by a brainless
cretin’ became not the death of hair-styling but the furthest outpost of a new
continuum of possible choices about how hair could look.

This
is a transition from polar thinking – the
kind of thinking that says, ‘It’s either this or it’s that’, or ‘Everything
that isn’t clearly this must be that’ – to
axial thinking. Axial thinking doesn’t deny that it could be this or that – but suggests that it’s more
likely to be somewhere between the two. As soon as that suggestion is in the
air, it triggers an imaginative process, an attempt to locate and conceptualize
the newly acknowledged grey-scale positions.

I am
interested in these transitions –
these moments when a stable duality dissolves into a proliferating and unstable
sea of hybrids. What happens at such times is that all sorts of things become
possible: there is a tremendous energy release, a great burst of
experimentation. Not only do the emerging possible positions on this new-born
axis have to be discovered and experienced and articulated: they have to be
placed in context with other existing axes to see what new resonances appear.

A good – and undigested – example of this
process is the (apparently temporary) demise of state communism in Eastern
Europe. It’s extraordinary that when the Berlin Wall came down everyone assumed
that the whole world was about to become one big market economy running on the
same set of rules. What happened instead was that the old dualism communism <–> capitalism
was revealed to conceal a host of possible hybrids. Now only the most ideological
governments (England, Cuba) still retain their fundamentalist commitment to one
end of the continuum: most governments are experimenting vigorously with
complicated customized blendings of market forces and state intervention.

An example of such a
complicated blending is defence spending, which allows a government nominally
committed to ‘market forces’ to have at its centre a completely intact command
economy within which It can direct the flow of social resources.

The period of transition is
marked by excitement, experimentation – and
resistance. Whenever a duality starts to dissolve, those who felt trapped at
one end of it suddenly feel enormous freedom – they can now redescribe themselves. But, by the
same token, those who defined their identity by their allegiance to one pole of
the duality (and rejection of the other) feel exposed. The walls have been
taken away, and the separation between inside and outside is suddenly gone.
This can create wide-scale social panic: vigorous affirmations of the essential
rightness of the ‘old ways’, moral condemnation of the experimentalists, ‘back
to basics’ campaigns, all the familiar signs of fundamentalism.

Essentially, cultures wish
to be able to control, or at least channel, such excitements and panics,
turning what could be chaotic uncertainty into a power either for revolution or
for consolidation. This is normally mishandled. Hostile propaganda campaigns
are good examples of fundamentalism at work: they are designed to push the
concepts of friend and enemy to extreme and unambiguous positions, and to
cement a complete and unvarying identification between two different axes: us <–> them,
friend <–> enemy.

Zones
of Pragmatic Deceit are the social and mental inventions that exist to
lubricate the friction between what we claim to stand for (i.e. simple polar
pictures) and what we actually have to do to make things work (i.e. navigate
over networks of axes). These two are often quite different, as situations
change much faster than the moral constructions that are sup­ posed to describe
them.

A good example of a ZPD is
the American consulate in Antigua, which has an elaborate system of deterring,
or at least preconditioning, black people entering the United States by
subjecting them to bizarre humiliations in theoretically routine matters such
as getting a visitor’s visa.

The
machinery of this humiliation is highly evolved: after several hours’ queueing,
applicants arc required to address the ever-sneering, never-interested staff
through a thick glass panel which has a small hole 3 ft from the ground. Since
the staff routinely feign inability to hear or understand what anyone is
saying, shrugging their shoulders and making to walk away to rejoin the
interminable conversation they were having before, applicants are soon forced
to their knees so that they can talk up through the
little slot. This induction into American society sets the right tone: instead
of ‘Bring us your poor, your sick ... etc.’, it’s ‘On your knees and beg.’

This
system exists because America –
like Britain, which has evolved other forms of immigrant humiliation – is committed ideologically to
the concept of open borders, but is increasingly worried by the prospect of
huge immigrant communities, and has no new language (other than that of
failure) in which to discuss a reassessment of position. This is the difficulty
with polar thought systems: they offer only two possible options.

You could say that the
evolution of culture is the gradual rethinking of the whole matrix of axes: the
discovery of new ones, of course, but also the careful tailoring –trimming and
extending –of existing ones. For instance, the axis of ‘possible human
relationships’ used to extend from ‘total slave’ to ‘absolute ruler’. Fewer
cultures are now willing to accept either of those extreme polarities as part
of their vision of civilized behaviour, so you could say that this particular
axis has been effectively shortened –
focused down – to
a narrower range.

What
characterizes fundamentalism is a set of extremely narrow axes that allow
almost no movement, no experimentation. And liberalism is perhaps the attempt
to keep the axes as open as possible without incurring complete social
fragmentation. The importance of symbolic behaviours like art and religion and
sexual fantasy is that they allow us to experiment symbolically with new and
even prohibited positions on the axial matrix – experiments that may be inconvenient, dangerous and
divisive in ‘real life’.

Observing the architectural landscape
today it’s clear that the type of work which is currently ascendant,
particularly among young practices, is very different to what came before the
financial crisis of 2008. But what, exactly, does that architectural landscape
look like? In an essay titled “Well into the 21st Century” in the latest issue
of El Croquis, Alejandro Zaera-Polo outlined a 21st-century taxonomy
of architecture, attempting to define and categorize the various new forms of
practice that have grown in popularity in the years since—and as a political
response to—the economic crisis. [Diagram 2]

The categories defined by Zaera-Polo
encompass seven broad political positions:

1)Activists, who
reject architecture’s dependence on market forces by operating largely outside
the market, with a focus on community building projects, direct engagement with
construction, and non-conventional funding strategies;

2)Populists,
whose work is calibrated to reconnect with the populace thanks to a
media-friendly, diagrammatic approach to architectural form;

3)New
Historicists, whose riposte to the “end of
history” hailed by neoliberalism is an embrace of historically-informed design;

4)Skeptics,
whose existential response to the collapse of the system is in part a return to
postmodern critical discourse and in part an exploration of contingency and
playfulness through an architecture of artificial materials and bright colors;

5)Material
Fundamentalists, who returned to a tactile and
virtuoso use of materials in response to the visual spectacle of pre-crash
architecture;

6)Austerity
Chic, a kind of architectural “normcore”
(to borrow a term from fashion) which focuses primarily on the production
process, and resulting performance, of architecture;

7)Techno-Critical, a
group of practices largely producing speculative architecture, whose work
builds upon but also remains critical of the data-driven parametricism of their
predecessors.

As a follow-up to that essay, Zaera-Polo
and Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal set out to apply the newly-defined categories
to the emerging practices of today with a nuanced “political compass” diagram.
They invited practices to respond to their categorization in order to unveil
the complex interdependencies and self-image of these political stances. For
the first time, here ArchDaily publishes the results of that exercise.

During the last decade, there has
been a growing interest within the architectural debate about the possibility
of a political re-engagement of the discipline, a subject which had been
remarkably absent from the disciplinary debate since the 1970s, but which seems
to be back in the spotlight.

Based on the political categories
outlined in the text “Well into the 21st Century,” published
in El Croquis 187, and deeply inspired by the infamous diagram from Charles Jencks in Architecture 2000, we set out to make a
synchronic map of contemporary emerging architectural practices.

We have selected 181 world-wide
emerging practices, which we have located on a dial where the political
categories were laid out, trying to set their adjacencies with some sense of continuity.
Starting from the Techno-critical, we move clockwise to the Technocratic, then
to the Cosmopolitical, then to the Austerity-chic, Activists and then to the
Material Fundamentalists, Constitutionalists, Historicists, Revisionists,
Skeptics and finally to the Populists.

Methodology

We mapped the emerging architectural
practices following their estimated political inclinations inside a circular
field comprised in the dial. While there was an interesting adjacency between
the different political categories, and we could place them nicely around the
circular field, some of them had to be placed in less evident adjacencies.

The difficulties of locating the
practices are evident: some of the practices were often bridging non-adjacent
categories, so they were difficult to locate. Practices are not homogeneous and
sometimes shift positions between projects and sometimes, between partners. We
nevertheless tried to place every one of the emerging practices that we thought
were significant on the map, to the best of our judgment, which is obviously
limited. This is Version 0.1, so we will hopefully do later iterations where a
different mapping technique could be used, further categories added or more
precise information about the practices can be included.

Then we asked all practices for a
self-assessment, so we could see the deviation between our estimated location
and their desired one. We sent the practices a list of the political categories
and the empty compass, deleting the names of the practices that we had located,
so they could position themselves without being affected by the proximity of
other practices, or by our own hypothesis about their location.

We asked them to position themselves
on the map: the closer they locate to the outer border of the compass, the more
orthodox they consider themselves in respect to the neighboring category; the
closer they go to the center of the circle, the more hybridized they would
consider themselves.

Analysis of
Data

1.101 practices entered
into the self-assessment (56%).

2.50% of the
practices placed themselves graphically. The other half seemed to be more
comfortable with a verbal description of their position in respect to the
categories.

5.20% placed
themselves in a different location, with a general tendency toward a more
central, hybridized location, many of them pointing towards the
“Cosmopolitical” category.

6.10% set
themselves in an opposite area.

7.5% said that
they do not fit into any of the categories, and proposed alternative categories
for their own practice. “Utopian” and “Pragmatic” are some of the requested
political grounds which were not available.

8.5% wanted to be
into two categories or in overlaps which were currently unavailable in the map.

9.Less than 5%
suggested different positions for each of the partners.

10.5% asked for a
change of their political location after seeing our full compass hypothesis.

11.Less than 5%
distributed their projects over the map saying every project has a different
political stance and there is no overarching political stance in their
practice, as it is related to the specific situation of the project.

12.Less than 5%
were happy with any location we gave them.

13.Less than 5%
described their practice according how they approach each category.

14.Less than 5%
provided specific coordinates of their location or suggested that a more
precise geometrical diagram could simplify their answer.

15.5% expressed
interest but did not send any answer.

16.5% showed
gratitude for including them but refused to participate because of being
extremely busy or because they considered the experiment inadequate to capture
the profession, irrelevant, or they thought the categories were subjective,
imprecise and disputed.

Conclusions

There is a logical reluctance in the
practices to accept our categorization. Given the current resurgence in
politics in architecture, we expected emerging practices to have a more
ideological stance to practice than the previous generation. Instead, we
noticed a general refusal to take a clear stance. Perhaps our categories were
not sufficiently varied. Some practices requested the category “Utopian” which
was missing from the reference text, and the categories on offer. This was
particularly true of those in the categories of the Activists and the
Populists. We had excluded Utopianism simply because we do not believe any of
the practices included can be considered truly utopian. We do believe there may
be Utopian practices in architecture today but rarely within the selection of
practicing architects which we have adopted for our analysis.

There were several requests for a
“Pragmatic” label, as if Realpolitik was still alive and well within the
emerging generation, despite the general claim for a more “engaged”
architectural practice. We had deliberately avoided Pragmatism as a political option,
as it was one of the most common claims of the previous generation of
“neo-liberal” practices, and it appears to imply a lack of a strong ideological
conviction as a driver of the practice. However, several practices appear to
reclaim pragmatism as a political stance, even referring to authorities such as
Latour, Marres, etc. Perhaps a difference should be made between ideological
and tactical politics in further iterations of this experiment. Many of the
practices tended to express a wish to move toward the center of the chart, to
remain in a more ambiguous position, including those positions which claimed
that every project develops its own political stance. Some of them even claimed
that every partner has a different political stance, which is both probably
true and interesting.

Other than the tendency toward the
center, Activism and Cosmopolitical are some of the most coveted locations for
emerging practices. Those located in the Populist area did not agree with their
location and tended to complain of oversimplification of their position. This
may very well be true, as populism is more of a style of delivery and we
ourselves believe that, while it may be predominant in some practices, we can
probably have populists among the Cosmopoliticals, the Activists or the
Material Fundamentalists.

Those practices that we have located
in the Material Fundamentalism or the Cosmopolitical tended not to respond to
the experiment by a large margin. The same is true for the people we located
within the Activist and Austerity proponents. That seems to be consistent with
their political stance of prioritizing the actual building itself, the cosmos
or the engagement with the community...

The Global compass was not as global
as we had wanted: we did not manage to engage a sufficient number of Asian
practices, despite their disproportionate weight in the global construction
output by comparison with other regions in the world. The scarce engagement of
Asian practices in the study may be an index of a general disbelief in
architectural politics, or perhaps the reluctance to engage with a possibly
too-Western political perspective.

80% of the contributors expressed a
positive attitude towards the classification. Even some of the ones who refused
to take part in the quest qualified the experiment as “nice,” “intriguing,”
“amazing,” “maniac,” “genial,” “funny,” “great,” “very cool,” “super interesting,”
or “fascinating,” and they appeared to like the fact that a magazine best known
for monographs of established architects was willing to open this debate. To
all those who engaged in the experiment, in whatever form, our deepest
gratitude. We hope to continue the debate that was initiated here with all of
them, to produce more sophisticated versions of this map.

TheCompassofBeauty:

ASearchfortheMiddle

Lars Spuybroek

(An
excerpt from the forthcomingchapterin:MariaVoyatzaki(ed.),ArchitecturalMaterialisms:Nonhuman
Creativity(Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press)).

Compass and Wheel

Before we
move to the final stage in the development of a biaxial systemacy, in the form
ofCharlesHartshorne’sDiagramofAestheticValues,weshouldtakeabrieflookattheideasonbeautyofhisprimaryinfluence,theAnglo-AmericanphilosopherAlfredNorthWhitehead.LikeHartshorne,Whiteheaddevelopedhisideasonbeautyquitelateinlife,andnotreallyuntiltwoofhislastbooks,AdventuresofIdeas(1933)and Modes of Thought(1938),
publishedwhen he was in his seventies.

AsIhavediscussedonearlieroccasions,39todefinethenatureofthetwoaxesproperlyitisvitaltounderstandWhitehead’sargument,especiallyconsideringthe
historyofaesthetictheories,which,bytheway,bothheandHartshornefeltconfident
enoughtoomit.Beauty—“theteleologyoftheuniverse,”asWhiteheadphrasedit40—consistsoftwodimensions,oneof“mutualadaptation,”theotherof“patternedcontrasts,”41or,inthewordsofPrice,HogarthandBurke,onedimensionofsmoothnessandoneofroughness.Theaxisofmutualadaptation(notethephrase’s subtleevolutionaryandenvironmentalring)indexesthenecessityofharmonizing,thatis,wholesharmonizingwithotherwholes;inshort,thesyntheticaxisofsmoothness,or extensity.Thefactthatitconsistsofanaxismeansthatontheoneendwefindthings
thatharmonizeextremely,thatareultraunified,whichWhiteheadcalls“minorbeauty”or“theabsenceofapainfulclash.”42Meanwhile,ontheotherend,wefindthingsthatdon’t succeed in harmonizing, that is, things that are ultraplurified, what we call ugly. Itisimportanttounderstandthattheotherterm,contrast,isdifferentfrommerediversity,though.Thingsdonotsimplyvary,theybreakawayfromeachother.Weseefracturesemerging,suddenshiftsandcuts(beingliterallyanalytic).Suchcontrastsandfracturesoftenleadtolayeringandstratificationwithpartsorgroupsofpartshidingbehindoneanother,inwhatweoftendenotewith“depth”or“profundity.”Therefore, theeffectofcontrastisoftenexpressedbymagnitude,whichiswhywefindthe previouslydiscussedgreatnessofthesublimeonthisaxis,aswellasthesmallnessofthecute at its opposite end.

Weshouldlookattherepositioningofbeautyfirst.Itisquiteclearthat
Whitehead’snotionofbeautyliesatthecoreofhisprocessphilosophy:thingsareonly beautifulintheirstrivingforbeauty.Beautyis,aboveall,ateleologicalconcept,since, asWhiteheadhimselfsaid,“adaptationimpliesanend,”46andwhilethingsstrivetoharmonizetheycanonlydosobyfreeingtheirparts,allowingthemtobreakaway.Beauty, then, is not simply a state but a vector, similar to
Apollo’s arrow at the beginningofourdiscussion:eachextensiveactcarriestheneedforintensity.Beautyinherentlyliesatthecenterofallthis,asliterallythetargetofeveryarrow,merging targetwithtrajectory.Itlieswherethetwoaxesintersect,andnotwhereDessoirlocatedit,attherim.EventhoughHartshornewasdeeplyinfluencedbyWhitehead,to actuallypositionbeautyatthecenterofacirclewithtwoaxeswasamasterstroke.47ThinkingbacktoPlato’swhiteandblackhorses,wecanseehowHartshorne’smodelrecaststhetwoforcesasonestrivingforharmonizationandtheotherforintensity.InHartshorne’sdiagram,beautyisagainfirmlypositionedinthemiddle,butthemiddleofafarmorecomplexsystemthatreconfiguresPlato’smonopolar,solarnotionofbeauty:“Beauty,inthemostnaturalsenseoftheword,isthecenter,thedoublemeaninbothdimensions.”48Beautyisnotasimple,singularmiddle,butamiddletryingtofindanother middle.

Translated back into the color wheel, this would give
us the standard hues at theouteredgeofthecircle,withmorebrightnessmixedintoeachcoloruntilitbecomespure white light in the middle.(Plato’s solar model ofbeauty was probablyno accident.)Nowweshouldalsobeabletofindaplaceforeverynameableaestheticvalueonthiscircle,sincefeelingscanvaryinalldirections,bothrotationallyandradially.Weshould
havenoproblemfindingpositionsthatarelocatedneitheratthecenterorattherimbutoccupytheas-yet-undefinedareainbetween—thequirky,thequaint,theweird,thecool,theelegant,thevulgar,themelodramatic,thehorrific,thegruesome,etc.—butthat isan argumentwe will save for later.

Whenwefast-forwardthroughthehistoryofbeauty,thefirstpeculiaritythatattracts ourattentionisthatitstartedwithPlato,whohatedart,thendevelopedthroughaesthetics,withindispensablecontributionsbyartists,andthenmovedawayfromartagain.Forexample,IthinktheLargeHadronColliderandtheSaturnVrocketaremoresublimethanpaintingsofmountains,farmoreabstractandfarmoreviolent.Andfootball stadiums are more magnificent
than Kant’s St. Peter’s, and when a wave performedby80,000spectatorsmovesoverthestands,weareoverpoweredandsweptaway—touseLonginus’sterms—bysheerawe.GeneralTommyFranksalsocalledhisinvasionofBaghdadastrategyof“shockandawe,”leavingnomisunderstandingaboutwhereweshouldlocatethesublimeinourownage.Ithinkthereismoreterrorand horrorinthedailyimageryofsuicidebombingsthaninAlien,Fridaythe13thandThe TexasChainsawMassacreputtogether.Thereismoreofthecommonplaceandthe ordinaryinrealitytelevision,intheendlesssoapoperasandinFacebookpoststhaninthestreetlifeofBaudelaire’sParis.Andifyoutype“beauty”intoyoursearchengine,
youwon’tfindtheworkofcontemporaryartistsbutazillionwebsitesrelatedtothe cosmeticsindustry.Andwhoisnotcutetoday(thoughnosocietygoesasfarasthe Japanesewiththeirkawaii)?Itseemsthatartisplayinganever-smallerrole—andthemediaanever-largerone—inthedevelopmentofthediagram,andespeciallyinhowitorganizesthedistributionofobjects.WasPlatorightagain?Permitmetoleavethatasan openquestion.

In any case, what becomes evident in the developments over the last fifty years isthattheyshowtheontologicalnatureofthediagrammoreprominently.Itisalsoclearfromthesedevelopmentsthatweseemtobelivinginanerathatisexpandingthediagramathighspeedwhilemovingawayfromitsmiddlewithequalspeed.Welivein anageofdesign:notjustthedesignofobjectsbutofevents,conceptsandissues,oforganizationsandprocedures,evenofourownlives.One’sownlifehasbecomeaproject.Thenumberofthingsisgrowingexponentially,andgrowingexponentially furtherawayfrombeauty.Ifthediagramconcernsallthings,notjustworksofart,weshouldrealizethatitconcernsthemthroughbeauty.Thisisthetruepowerof
Hartshorne’s Diagram of Aesthetic Values:
only beauty can relate the vertical axisto
thehorizontalone.Thetwoaxesarenotindependent;theydon’tformamerecoordinatesystem.Iftheywereindependent,thediagramwouldnotbeacirclebutasquare,andwecouldsimplycombineoneextremewiththeother,whichgoesagainstthewhole
notionofamiddle.Asquareisnotanequation;acircleis.WeshouldkeepinmindthateventhesublimeinHartshorne’sdiagramisplottedhalfwayagainstthevertical
axisofharmonyandcoordination.Thefactthattheinfluenceofeachaxisalwaysneedstobemediatedmakesbeautymorethansimplythemiddleofacircularworld:it
reversestherolesandmakestheperipheryaderivativeofthemiddle.Bothareasarecircles:a white one in the middle and a multicolored one at the outskirts.

Whenwetakeacarefullookatthediagram,wecanbetterseehowprocessand productnotonlyarecombinedbutarecombinedsymmetricallyonlyinthemiddleand asymmetricallyeverywhereelse(thoughstillequated).WhenwegobackagaintostandinfrontofSt.Peter’swithourfacesupturnedandourmouthsopeninadmiration,itisthemagnificentstructurethatoverwhelmsus.Ifwemovefromthebasilica’spositionof
magnificenceverticallydownonHartshorne’smap,weencounterfiguressuchas MacbethandMichaelJackson,obliteratedbythetragiceventstheyhaveinstigated.Atthepositionofmagnificence,itisthemassivestructurethatoverwhelmsus,andatthepositionofthetragic,itistheenormityoftheeventsoverwhelmingtheirsubjects:exactlythesamemagnitudeinverydifferentdimensions.Thisiswhywerecognizethe topareaofthediagram—therealmofmagnificence,boredomandthecommonplace—asthegeneralterritoryofstructures, orwhatMikelDufrennecalled thespatialarts,and
thebottomarea—therealmofthetragic,theuglyandthecomic—asthezoneofevents,oragainintermsofaesthetics,thetemporalarts.55Thatdoesn’tmeanbuildings
“are”boring;itmeansthatwhentimeisstoppedtheybecomeboring,asinWarhol’sEmpire,wheretheEmpireStateBuildingisboringbecauseyouaretrappedinyourseat.(IfyouarewalkinginNewYork,theEmpireStateBuildingisanythingbutboring.)OrthinkofthefunnyexampleofHeideggerstuckinaprovincialrailwaystationaftermissingatrain.56Forcedtowaitforfourhours,hestartedwalkingupanddown
the platform like a pendulum, hopelessly trying to restoretime, like a
panther in acage.Inversely,theasymmetryofspaceandtimemeansthatthepositivityofuglinessfunctionsverywellinplays,literatureandmoviesbutnotinarchitecture.WhileinagangstermovieacharacterlikeAlCaponebooststhespeedofeventsbybashingin headswithabaseballbat,anuglybuildingdoesnothavethesamepositiveeffectonurbanspace.Thatdoesn’tmeanabuildingcan’tbeugly;obviouslyitcan,andaplaycanaseasilybeboring—thatisnotmypoint.Inthespecificcaseofaboringplay,Ithinkitexposestoomucharchitecture,forexamplewhenitlacksdevelopmentandhascardboardcharacters that move through the drama without
changing. Similarly, a buildingisuglywhenittriestobefunnyorbecomestootheatrical,sincethechances arethatwewillencounteritmorethanonce,killingallpossiblehumor,orthatwewillexperience it from more than one angle, destroying every illusion.

Standinfrontofa400-year-oldoaktree.Itsstructure—thebranchings,thebifurcations,therandomcurvature—allthisispureprocess,puretimeandgrowth.Butdoesitpresentitselftousastime?Doweexperienceitastime?No,weexperienceitassheermagnificence.Allthatwastimeispresentedtousasbeauty,andallthatisbeautyweexperienceintime,yes,butthesecondstretchoftimeiswhollydiscontinuouswith the first. In
this sense,beauty is purelyPlatonic,
atemporalstoppage.

Formillenniaandperhapsinimitationofcrustaceansortermites,humanbeingshavehadthehabitofsurroundingthemselveswithshellsofallkinds.Thebuildings,clothes,cars,imagesandmessagesthattheyendlesslysecrete,sticktotheirskin,adheretothefleshoftheirexistencejustasmuchastheirbonesdo.Thereneverthelessexistsanotabledifferencebetweenhumans,crustaceansandtermites,whichisthat so farnoonehasdetectedcorporationsofarchitects,tailorsormedia‘professionals’inthelasttwospecies.Whateverthecasemaybe,oneobservesthatforaverylongperiodofhistoryitistoanecolithicalexpressionofthesortthatbuildsziggurats,demolishestheBastille,takestheWinterPalacethatweowethedelineation of socialAssemblages.Exceptthatrecently,besides
stone beinghidden behindsteel,concreteandglass,itisabove
all in termsofspeedsofcommunicationandthemasteryofinformationthatthedivisionofpowersisplayedout.Undertheseconditions,architectsnolongerreallyknowwhichsainttoprayto!WhatusetodaywoulditbetoinvokeLeCorbusierinacitylikeMexico,forexample,whichiscareeringdeliriouslytowardsits40millionthinhabitant!EvenBaronHausmannwouldn’tbeabletodoanythingaboutit!Politicians,technocrats,engineersdealwiththissortofthingbyhavingaslittlerecourseaspossibletothemenofanartthatHegelnonethelessputinfirstplace.Certainlyarchitectsretaincontrolofaminimalnicheinthedomainofsumptuaryconstructions.Butweknowthatpositionsareexpensiveinthisdomain,and,shortofaccepting–likeapostmoderndandy–thepolitico-financialwheeler-dealeringthattheyimplyateverystep,theirrare occupiers are generally doomed to an underhandeddegradingoftheircreativetalents.Thepathsofpuretheory,1ofutopia,2ofanostalgicreturntothepast,3remain.Oreventhatofcriticalcontestation,althoughthetimesscarcelyseemtolendthemselvestoit!

Withtheaccentthusdisplacedfromtheobjecttotheproject–whateverthecharacteristicsofitssemioticexpressionandsemanticcontentmaybe–anarchitecturalworkhenceforthcallsforaspecificelaborationofitsenunciative‘matter’:howisonetobeanarchitecttoday?Whichpartofoneselfistobemobilized?Inwhatwaymustoneengageandwithwhatoperators?Whatrelativeimportancewilldevelopers,engineers,urbanists,actualandpotentialusershaveforhim?Towhatpointwillitbelicittocompromisewith the diversepartiespresent?Itis
a matterhereof a highlyelaboratedtransferentialeconomythatIproposetoexaminefromtheangleofthetwomodalitiesofconsistencyoftheenunciationofanarchitecturalconcept:

Don’tmisunderstandme:thesingularizationofwhichitisaquestionhereisnotasimpleaffairof‘spiritualcompensation’,a‘personalization’ dispensedasakindof‘after-salesservice’.Itarisesfrominstancesthat operateat the heartof the architecturalobjectandconferitsmostintrinsicconsistencyonit.Underitsexternaldiscursiveface,thisobjectisestablishedat the intersectionof a thousandtensionsthatpullit
in everydirection;butunderitsethico-aestheticenunciativefacesitholdsitselftogetherinanon-discursivemode,thephenomenologicalaccesstowhichisgiventousthroughtheparticularexperienceofspatializedAffects.Onthissideofathresholdofcognitiveconsistency,thearchitecturalobjecttopplesoverintotheimaginary,thedream,delirium,whereasonthissideofathresholdofaxiologicalconsistency,thedimensionsofitthatarethealterityanddesirecrumble–likethecinematicimagesthatAustralianAboriginalsturnedawayfromlongagobecausetheyfoundnothingofinterestinthem.Onthissideofanaestheticthresholdofconsistency,itceasestocatchtheexistenceoftheformsandintensitiescalledontoinhabitit.

ToworkinthiswayfortherecompositionofexistentialTerritories,inthecontextofoursocietiesdevastatedbycapitalisticFlows,thearchitectwouldthushavetobecapableofdetectingandexploitingprocessuallythecatalyticpointsofsingularitiesthatcanbeincarnatedinthesensibledimensionsofthearchitecturalapparatusaswellasinthemostcomplexofformalcompositionsandinstitutionalproblematics.Everycartographicmethodforachievingthisislicit,oncethearchitect’scommitment–letusnotstepbackfromthisoldSartreanconcept,whichhaslongbeentaboo–findsitsownregimeofethico-aestheticautonomization.Theonlycriterionfortruththatwillbeimposedonhimwillthenbeaneffectofexistentialconsummationandsuperabundanceofbeing,whichhe will notfailtoencounteroncehehasthegoodfortunetofindhimselfcarriedoffbyaprocessofeventization,thatistosay,ofthehistoricalenrichmentand

In a desperate attempt to catch up
with forms of contemporary media culture, architects tend to perpetuate earlier
notions of culture as representation rather than culture as forms of life.1
Architecture has yet to break with culture as reflection still firmly embedded
in its concepts of Utopia, Type, History, City, Geometry, Landscape and
Ornament. To speak of the ecologies of architecture is to
break with judgement for experience, to break with the propositional
knowing-that for the impredicative knowing-how.2 As the
self-declared empiricist (i.e. pluralist) Gilles Deleuze put it in his book on
Nietzsche, it is not about justification, “but a different way of feeling:
another sensibility.”3 If to think differently we have to feel
differently then the design of built
environment has no other purpose but to transform us.4 While
engineering focuses on solutions, architecture dramatises the problem so that
we may stumble upon a new emancipatory potential.5 After all,
problems always have the solution that they deserve.6[Diagram 5]

Pedagogy of the Senses

Posthuman
architecture ought to focus on the encounter between thought and that which
forces it into action. While accepting multiple nested scales of reality, the
ecologies of architecture challenge
the alleged primacy of the ‘physical’ world. What we engage with is the world
considered as an environment
and not an aggregate of objects. The emphasis is on the encounter, where experience is seen as an emergence which
returns the body to a process field of exteriority.7 Sensibility
introduces an aleatory moment into thought’s development thus turning contingency
into the very condition for thinking. Not only does this upset logical identity
and opposition, it also places the limit of thinking beyond any dialectical
system. Thought cannot activate itself by thinking but has to be provoked. It
must suffer violence. Art and architecture may inflict such violence. They harbour
the potential for breaking up the faculties’ common function by placing them
before their own limits: “thought before the unthinkable, memory before the
immemorial, sensibility before the imperceptible, etc.”8 The
eco-logical ‘perspectivist’ assault on the ego-logical representational thinking
inevitably impinges upon the identity of the subject. Where Kant founded the
representational unity of space and time upon the formal unity of consciousness, difference fractures consciousness
into multiple states not predicable of a single subject. In other words, difference
breaks with the differentiation of an undifferentiated world in favour of the
homogenisation of a
milieu or umwelt.9To
speak of Whiteheadian super-ject is to break with earlier notions of sub-ject
as a foundation.10 ‘Desiring-machines’connect, disconnect, and reconnect with one another without meaning or intention.11
Paradoxically, actions are primary in relation to the intentions that
animate them the same way that desiring is primary to volition. Individuality is not
characteristic of a self or an ego, but a perpetually individualising
differential. It is not the subject that has a point of view, rather it is the
point of view that has its larval subject.12 Deleuze explains: “[e]ach faculty, including thought, has only involuntary
adventures,” and “involuntary operation remains embedded in the empirical.”13
This constitutes his famous ‘pedagogy of the senses’.

Asignifying Semiotics

The ecologies of architecturerely on cartography to overturn the
theatre of representation into the order of desiring-production.14 The
ultimate ambition is to debunk hylomorphism – where form is imposed upon
inert matter from without and where the architect is seen as a god-given,
inspired creator and genius – and to promote the alternative immanent
morphogenetic approach that is at once more humble and ambitious.15 There
lies a (r)evolutionary potential in creating the ‘new’, defined as the circulation
of de-coded and de-territorialized flows that resist the facile co-option by
re-coding or capturing.16 To speak of univocity of expression is to
break with equivocity of the hegemonic linguistic sign. Action and perception
are inseparable, as are forms of life and their environments. If the objects of
knowledge were separated from the objects of existence, we would end up with a
duality of mental and physical objects – bifurcation of nature – that leads to
an ontologically indirect perception. By contrast, the premise of the ecologies of architecture is that
perceptual systems resonate to information, where information is defined
as a difference that makes a difference.17 This ‘direct realism’ is
grounded on the premise that, from the outset, real experience is a relation of
potential structure rather than a formless chaotic swirl onto which structure
must be imposed by cognitive process (sapience). The world is seen as an
ongoing open process of mattering,
where meaning and form are acquired in the actualisation of different agential
virtualities.18 Following Deleuze’s argument, it is possible to
assert that the genetic principles of sensation (sentience) are thus at the
same time the principles of composition of art(efact).19

Niche Constructionism

Architecture ought to reclaim its vanguard position within the
Epigenetic Turn which embraces tekhne
as constitutive of posthumanity, and not just the other way around.20
Experience is not an event ‘in’ the mind. Rather, the mind emerges from
interaction with the environment. The predominant homeostatic notion of
structure in architectural thinking has to give way to the event-centred
ontology of relations. The metastability of existence (formerly known as
sustainability) is to be mapped in the very act of becoming. The Affective Turn
in architecture concentrates on perception which occurs not on the level at
which actions are decided but on the level at which the very capacity for
action forms, the virtual.21 If representation is a means to an end
(to classify), schizoanalytic cartography is a means to a means (to intervene).22
Teleology cannot be used as the sole design criterion because the freedom of
action is never a de facto established condition, it is always a virtuality.23
This proto-epistemological level of potentialisation (priming) is already
ontological.24 It concerns change in the degree to which a life-form
is enabled vis-à-vis its (built) environment. Their reciprocal determination
commits contemporary architecture to ecology in general and ethico-aesthetics
in particular.25 The psychotropic cry that “we shape our
cities; thereafter they shape us” is to be taken literally. Only recently have
biologists conceded the effect that ‘niche construction’ has on the inheritance
system.26 They confirmed that a life-form does not only passively submit to the pressures of a
pre-existing environment (evo), but also actively
constructs its existential niche (devo), that being the city in the
anthropocene. The implications for the discipline of architecture, considering
its quasi-causal role in the neo-Lamarckian Baldwian
Evolution (evo-devo), remain significant and binding.27

Futurity

The New Materialisms in general, and the Affective Turn in
particular, seem to be gaining momentum to such an extent that even some of the
scholars of this affiliation have been urging caution.28 However, as
far as the discipline of architecture is concerned, this otherwise healthy dose
of scepticism is not only premature but also counterproductive. In its history,
architecture has undergone a gradual disassociation from the material realm and
become an ultimate white-collar profession. The consequent withdrawal from
reality (thesis of autonomy) has been variously seen as ‘bad’ escapism or a ‘good’
strategy of resistance.29 The urge to ward off the givens and to
continue to contemplate (possible) alternatives is praiseworthy. But idealist bracketing
and messianic ambition come at a price. Architects might end up painting
themselves into a corner of impotence by depriving themselves of the (virtual) means
to intervene. After all, intervention has always been the main trait of (any)
materialism. The best strategy of resistance seems to lie not in opposition but
in (strategic) affirmation.30 The recognition of the present-future
relation provides a point of departure for an ecological account of
anticipation and/or creation akin to Isabelle Stengers’ thinking par le
milieu.31 What defines the concept of futurity is the
inseparability of the event and its environment. Futurity is a condition of the
present; it is the anti-utopianism of the ecologies of architecture par excellence.